Reflections on Feedback
Do we have it all wrong?
I spent 30 years being “reviewed” and I never really questioned the necessity or utility of giving and receiving feedback until recently, when I read this Medium story by Carol Sanford. She makes a strong case against it and her perspective immediately resonated with me as “right”.
I am sensitive by nature (which I attempt to cover up with varying degrees of success), making criticism really hard for me to hear. As one example, I cried in a review meeting early on in my career (I was ~29) and it turned out my boss was promoting me. He saved that information until the end 😒.
Ms. Sanford, in her book No More Feedback, shares the research indicating that I’m definitely not alone in my response to criticism. She calls what happens after we get negative feedback “runaway”: spending significant amounts of time mentally justifying, defending, perseverating, and just simply being upset by the feedback we received.
“Runaway” is clearly counter to being productive at work and yet companies persist in rating, ranking, and reviewing people in spite of this, under the assumption that it is necessary to help people grow and we should all just be OK with it.
I avoided working on this perceived flaw in myself for the most part and just gritted my teeth at review time. My…
